Do you know the messages you're sending?

I recently met a manager, “Ingrid,” who had alienated her entire team. Ingrid was a kind person but she had facial expressions that upset and agitated others. When she was thinking her face became a blank stare. This stare seemed like an angry glare to her staff. Soon, every attempt at communication was colored by mistrust and assumptions. Her staff saw hostile motives in Ingrid’s every action. Meanwhile, Ingrid felt her team’s resistance and soon her facial expressions grew even sterner.

Are you aware of the messages your sending to others? Do you find that other people often misinterpret your words or moods?

Taking the Temperature of a Work Culture--Spent the day at Monsanto in Waterman, IL

Spent the day interviewing staff at Monsanto to prepare for our training event next week. What a great way to hone in on the true needs of the group! I'm also using Survey Monkey for surveying needs but today was extra special. I feel connected to these great folks who bared their souls to me today....

29 Semi-Productive Things I Do Online When I’m Trying to Avoid Real Work

A really helpful list! Here it is.

Job Crafting Brings Higher Motivation to Work

Have you heard about job crafting? I'm now offering workshops in this terrific paradigm-shifter. While many of us already find ways to tweak our jobs to make them more satisfying, Job Crafting is a technique that helps us change small aspects of our current jobs. These changes can bring us much more satisfaction at work. This excerpt, from a Time Magazine article on the subject, also highlights the importance of our emotions in this process.

Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says it's crucial for people to pay attention to their workday emotions. "Doing so," she says, "will help you discover which aspects of your work are most life-giving — and most life-draining."

Many of us get stuck in ruts. Berg, a Ph.D. student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who helped develop the job-crafting methodology, says we all benefit from periodically rethinking what we do. "Even in the most constraining jobs, people have a certain amount of wiggle room," he says. "Small changes can have a real impact on life at work."

Here's the full article.

Motivation through Increasing Autonomy at Work

Yesterday's Positive Psychology News Daily had a great article on how to foster an engaging workplace. Here's an excerpt.

Autonomy-supported leaders create the environment that fosters choice, giving people opportunities for success and for developing feelings of competence. According to science, self-motivation thrives in the medium of choice.

How do we build choice into jobs? Helping employees recraft their jobs around reaching specified goals by exercising their strengths, passions and skills is likely to result in more engagement and a better outcome for everyone. Employees are more energized when their actions emanate from choice rather than external control. The vitality that comes from caring about the work itself and relationships with colleagues can be, as they say, priceless.

Here's the entire article.

How to Become More Creative.

Here's an excerpt from a great article in today's Positive Psychology News Daily.

Do you ever wish you were more creative? New research has shown that adults can be primed to become more creative simply by being asked to think like children. There are many kinds of creativity, including flexible thinking, elaboration of existing ideas, fluency of ideas, and originality.
For the purposes of the study conducted at North Dakota State University, college students were asked to imagine and write about what they would do if school was canceled for the day. In the experimental condition, they were primed in advance of writing to imagine that they were seven years old. Merely being primed to think like a child resulted in the production of more original responses on a subsequent measure of creativity.

What Happens to Creativity as We Grow?
There are numerous benefits to being more creative. However in school, creativity is usually valued less than conventional thinking, whether you are a student or a teacher. It may be that formal education discourages divergent thinking, and that school may also coincide with a natural brain development shift in students from more impulsive and less self-conscious thought to less spontaneous and more rule-bound thought.
Since both ways of thinking are important (imagine if we were all child-like all the time), it is intriguing to think about interventions that would enable you to be more creative at least some of the time. You might try thinking like a 7-year-old right before you have to do something that requires original thinking.

Here's the entire article.

Dear Amy, Nonverbals and Emotional Intelligence

I appreciated reading this story from today's Chicago Tribune.

Dear Amy: A mom who wrote to you was concerned about her teenage daughter being sarcastic and unpleasant, and losing friends.
My daughter also has issues relating to her peers in a way that isn't sarcastic. She is also very straightforward, even if it's not always nice.
We had been working with her on this, but she was resisting. She thought she didn't need to change.
Her counselor suggested that we videotape her and let her see it.
She was relaying a story from school with us, and we had her say it again on tape. When we showed it to her, she was shocked. She couldn't believe how her face looked and how she sounded. We are now having a much easier time working with her on reframing her statements.
Sometimes a picture (or video) is worth a thousand arguments.
— Relieved Mom

Dear Relieved: People who have trouble reading social cues often need training to learn this important skill. Viewing photos or video of other people's facial expressions can actually teach recognition.
Your daughter's therapist had a great idea — to show your daughter her own face.

This video will make you smile.

A really fun 6 minute Ted talk on leadership.

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

Sometimes it's hard to choose between two great things.....

Instead of choosing, I'm seeking to strike a balance between the worlds of fiction and nonfiction. I want both. In addition to my training work, one of my plays is now turning into a film. I'll be helping to direct. Fun!

"The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Small Business Owners"

Here's an excerpt from the article "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Small Business Owners"

Emotional intelligence helps you:
-Deal with conflicts and problem solving
-Offer better customer service
-Hire the best people for the job
-Trust your business instincts and intuition
-Listen to others, understand them, and make them feel appreciated
-Control your reactions to challenges, and stay positive when mistakes happen
-Market to your customer because you’re better able to empathize with them
-Write better, more emotionally driven, content
-Connect with potential partners and build business relationships

You can read the entire article here.

Two Powerful Questions for Leaders (or anyone seeking to leave the world a better place)

1. How do people experience you?
2. How do people experience themselves when they are with you?

From “Remember Who You Are” by Daisy Wademan

Stand Up Comedy on a Monday--Worst PPT ever!

Funny video on our worst habits using powerpoint.

The Brain favors even a bad habit. Ugh.

An April issue of Wired offers some bad news. When we make poor decisions, these behaviors can become part of the “blueprint” for future actions. Scientists are proving that our brains seek easy answers and may look only to a precedent of what we have done before and repeat that action—even if the decision was regrettable.

This is another illustration of how our brain structure favors habitual behaviors and why changing behavior can be so difficult!

For the complete article click here.

© 2009 Laura Lewis-Barr all rights reserved

What Skills Are Associated with Emotional Intelligence?

These 8 skills will make you happier, healthier, more productive. They will improve your relationships and your efficiency at work. They may take a lifetime to fully develop but all these skills CAN be learned!

Distinguishing Emotions and Thoughts
Recognizing Patterns of Behaviors
Recognizing Destructive Thought Patterns
Navigating Emotions
Discovering Motivation
Utilizing Optimistic Thinking
Developing Empathy
Discovering Meaning and Purpose

These are my descriptions of the core competencies developed by 6seconds. For more info on their EI research, visit 6seconds.com

The value of emotional data

If I’m speaking to manufacturers or other “no-nonsense” groups, I sometimes worry that my EI workshops might be too “touchy feely.” An ironic concern, yes? But my fears illustrate our culture’s discomfort with emotions. I need to remind myself and my participants that emotions provide powerful information that we can’t access in any other way. Isn’t it time to look more deeply (and take more seriously) this unknown territory in ourselves?

Here’s one more irony: companies pour over financial data and shop floor statistics. Experts try to find any small area to leverage and improve performance. But we still ignore the most important element of workplace efficiency-- employees’ relationships and communication in the workplace. How much more could performance improve if we perceived, understood, and managed the emotions that underlie our everyday thoughts and actions?
©2010Lewis-Barr

What are Your Emotional Abilities?

This “Ability Model” from researchers, Caruso, Mayer and Salovey, is a great summary and reminder of the many skills we must develop to use our emotions well. Each level illustrates the many benefits of our emotions. We can use our emotions to: access others’ states of mind, assist in decision making, understand what a situation means to us, and problem solve. How are your skills in each of these areas?

Table 1 Ability Model (Caruso, Mayer and Salovey. 2000: 57)
__________________________________________________________________________________
Level 1--Perceiving
Identify emotions in thoughts
Identify emotions in other people
Express emotions accurately
Discriminate between accurate and inaccurate feelings

Level 2 Using
Prioritize thinking by directing attention
Generate emotions to assist judgment
Mood swings to change perspective
Emotional states to encourage problem solving

Level 3 Understanding
Label and recognize relations among emotions
Interpret meanings that emotions convey
Understand complex emotions
Recognize emotional transitions

Level 4 Management
Stay Open to feelings
Engage/detach from an emotion
Monitor emotions reflectively

Failure--the Prelude to Success

Results from 6 Seconds Workplace Issues Survey

6 Seconds is one of the premier organizations bringing EI training to schools and corporations (full disclosure-I trained with them). Here are some results from their recent workplace survey. Would you be surprised to note that --despite current economic pressure--the vast majority of responses still focus on the “people side?"

89% say employee’s feelings are “important” or “essential” to solving the issues the organization faces
91% report that “emotional intelligence” skills are “important” or “essential” to solving the issues the organization faces
The “people issues” are perceived to be about 63% more significant than “technical issues”

You can find more info on this survey here.

Quote for the Day

Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change."
-- Stephen R. Covey© 2009

Around the Holiday Table

Here's an experiment. Listen for (as Peter Drucker reminds us) "what isn't being said."

Could make the holidays much more interesting....